CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GRIFFIN
I manage to keep myself away from the house for the entire day. I can’t bear to see Casey’s anguish again, so I head to Cleveland and then my condo, and then I take meetings about the upcoming season until dusk falls.
By the time I step into the house, I’m full of anticipation. Because I know all it’s going to take is one look from her to dissolve the armor I spent all day rebuilding.
I have hockey back. I can’t add the love of my life on top of it.
It’s too much. It’s dangerous. I need space and time and distance and levelheadedness.
I don’t hear anything as I walk into the house. I flip the lights, listening for some sign of her. That’s when the details start sinking in.
All the stuff I’d gathered for her—trying to be helpful and in control, like always—is gone. The boxes are gone. The house feels empty somehow, even though everything is technically in place.
Then I spot the house key glinting on the countertop. Next to a fat envelope full of what I can only assume is money.
No note. Nothing. Because why would she, after what I said—and didn’t say—to her this morning?
My stomach wrenches. I can’t look at it. I pace the kitchen for a few moments, scrubbing a hand down my face. Then I head for the spare room, pushing the door open.
Empty.
Like nobody had even been here for the past three months.
I prop my hands on my hips and walk an aimless path around the house. It doesn’t feel right without her here; I can admit that much. But what the fuck am I supposed to do?
Hockey season begins in earnest in mid-September, but I’ll be leaving with some of my teammates on Tuesday evening to head to Colorado for our first-of-many pre-season skills camps. We’ll be gone for a week. Then when we get back, I’ll be living in Cleveland full time.
The new season will swallow me whole, and I’ll need to be on my A game until it coughs me up on the other side next May. No, higher than A game. I need to play perfectly to compete with the new guys on the team, with their uninjured ACLs and endless endurance.
My second chance with the team demands nothing less than laser focus.
I spend a lot of time that night trying not to think about Casey.
Wondering where she is, how she’s doing, whether she’ll ever talk to me again.
Part of me is glad she left, because I know I wouldn’t be able to look at her one more time without getting on my knees and begging her to forget everything I fucking said that morning.
Despite everything I told her, I didn’t say the most important piece—I fell in love with her, too.
Instead, I did what had to be done.
Controlled the outcome. Protected the plan.
So why the hell does this feel so fucking abysmal right now?
I go to bed with a knot in my gut. Of course I can’t sleep.
I wake up every hour thinking of Casey. I have dreams that she’s falling, and no matter how hard I lunge she’s just out of my reach.
She’s the first thing I think of when I drag myself out of bed the next morning.
Is she already on the road to Chicago? While coffee brews, my gaze moves to the blue vase on the countertop. It’s empty.
I can’t wait any longer.
I need to reach out.
GRIFFIN: Let me know when you make it to Chicago. Drive safe.
As soon as I hit send, I feel like the world’s biggest idiot. Why would she share a single thing with me after I broke her heart like I did? I drag my hands down my face, groaning.
I’ve been preparing myself for this separation for weeks, but it still feels like the absolute worst decision I’ve made in my life. All I can do is trust that it gets easier.
And remind myself why I chose this in the first place.
I leave the house and head for my mom’s. I don’t exactly want to talk to my family about this yet, at least not in a traditional sense. I get the feeling that Piper and my mom will not be very happy with me.
I let myself in the front door of my mom’s house, my footsteps falling quietly.
“Anybody here?” I head down the hallway.
Mom has been slowly returning to a full-time baking schedule using a temporary commercial kitchen she’s renting downtown while renovation work on her old building continues.
If she’s not here, she’s usually there. As I round the corner, I spot what I came for: the hourglass full of Dad’s ashes.
I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. The ashes inside begin to slip from one chamber to the next. I carry it with me to the back patio.
I sit on the floral cushion-lined patio chair, looking toward the big oak tree in the backyard. We scattered some of Dad’s ashes there, too. If there’s any chance of getting a fatherly nudge, it’s this way.
And right now, I fucking need it.
So I sit.
I listen. I dwell. I worry. I try to clear my head and fail. I’m pretty much a breathing ball of anxiety there on the back patio, thinking about a trillion worst-case scenarios, all involving losing Casey.
I was ten when my father, my hero, died.
And since then, I’ve battled anxiety on every possible level.
Waiting for the dominoes to fall, the other shoe to drop.
Loving someone is dangerous, because it can cripple you if you lose them.
That’s all I know. And I don’t think I have the strength to go through that again.
But I don’t know if I have the strength to keep myself away from Casey either.
I don’t even hear the footsteps approach until the hand is on my shoulder. I jolt, looking up to find Asher standing above me. He’s got a warm smile on his face as his gaze washes over me with the hourglass in my arms.
“Hey,” he says.
“You scared me.” I draw a deep breath, settling back into my spot.
“What are you doing?” He eases into the chair nearby, angled toward me. “Having some alone time?”
“I was, till you got here,” I tease.
“You good?” Asher is watching me suspiciously. I guess it’s not every day we carry dad’s ashes like this. I am kind of cradling them like a newborn after all.
“Yeah,” I say. Then I think better of it. I clear my throat. “Well, not really.”
“You wanna talk about it?” He’s squinting out at the yard, working his thumb over a knuckle as he inspects the distance. He looks like our dad when he does stuff like this.
“Probably would help,” I say with a laugh. “Casey left. I’m just dealing.”
“Why did she leave?”
“It was always the plan. Originally, she was going to be moving back to Chicago right about now. But she’s moving to Bayshore permanently.
She just went back to Chicago to go get out of her lease and wrap up some final details.
But when she gets back, she’s gonna do her own thing. I’ll be moving to Cleveland soon.”
“Well that seems convenient for you two if she’s going to be in Bayshore,” Asher says.
“I don’t have time for a relationship during the season,” I say. But the words feel like a test. Lackluster. A tired story I’ve been telling myself for too long.
“Okay,” Asher says slowly. “So if this is just because of hockey…why are you holding Dad’s ashes on the patio?”
His words land like a spear to the chest. I pinch my eyes shut because he’s coaxing something to the surface I’ve been circling but too afraid to engage with, a gardener eyeing poison ivy.
But I can’t answer.
“What’s this really about?” Asher asks gently.
I turn the hourglass over again, drawing a deep breath. I swear I could fucking cry right now, but I didn’t come here to sob into Asher’s shoulder.
“I guess it’s about the fact that I fell in love…
and I can’t handle the fear that comes along with it.
I know how good we are together. She feels it too.
But the thought of going there with her, truly going for it, and then potentially losing her someday, is too fucking much for me.
It destroys me now. What’s gonna happen once we’re two years in, five years in, ten years in?
If I lose her someday, Asher? I’ll fucking die. ”
He nods thoughtfully, his gaze on some inscrutable point of the patio. “So you thought it was safer to lose her now.”
A breath whooshes out of me. “Yes.”
“And you plan to…what? Remain single your entire life? Deny yourself love and affection out of fear? Or maybe start a family with someone you don’t love as much, so it wouldn’t hurt as much to lose them?”
His words sound a little ridiculous. I laugh. “I hadn’t gotten that far. I was kind of stuck on the whole ‘remaining single’ phase of things.”
“You can admit it sounds silly though.”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat, watching the ashes slip through the hourglass.
“I think, regardless of the outcome…it’s probably better to go after things than to let them wither unexplored.” Asher contemplates something in the backyard for a moment then nods. “I already have regrets from not doing that exact thing.”
“Like what?”
He sighs. “This isn’t about me.”
“You brought up regrets. Now I wanna know.”
Asher narrows his eyes at me, but he’s got the start of a grin on his face. “When it comes to love and relationships. I didn’t act when I should have. And I lost her to someone else.”
I reel back a little, looking at my brother. He’s always been the rock solid, untouchable one. To find out that he’s got some piece of his heart wandering the earth is a shock to me.
“Who is she?”
He waves me off. “This is not about me.”
The sounds of muted conversation reach us. The back door slides open a moment later, and I can tell without even looking that Mom and Piper have shown up.
“What’s going on back here?” Piper asks. “Is this the beginning of a surprise party?”
“Not exactly,” I croak.
Piper flounces into the chair next to me. My mom appears behind me, squeezing my shoulders.
“How are my boys?” she asks warmly.
“I’ve been better,” I admit.
“I can tell.” She pats my chest. “You haven’t gotten the hourglass down in years.”
Leave it to Mom to notice those details. I sigh, turning the hourglass over in my hands again, watching the ashes.